Let's face it: There are times in every IT pro's week when the urgent need for high powered technical intelligence wanes a bit—especially on a slow Friday afternoon. That's when technical prowess turns to such tasks as fine tuning the advanced settings of the ultimate OpenGL 3D screen saver or tweaking your Sound Scheme in order to assign interesting .wav files to the various Program Events.

The next time you find yourself doing the latter, try adding some of the sound effects from Windows' Pinball game to your Sound Scheme. Here's how:

  1. Go to Start | Control Panel and double-click the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties tool.
  2. Select the Sounds tab and then choose the program event that you wish from the Program Events menu.
  3. Click the Browse button
  4. Select the Look In drop-down list and navigate to the C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Pinball folder.
  5. Sample the .wav files by hovering over a file and clicking the Play Sound button in the Preview panel located in the bottom left corner of the Browse For Default Beep Sound dialog box.
  6. Once you've identified an interesting sound, double-click the .wav file, click the Apply button, and save your Sound Scheme.

Trick: Try assigning Sound999.wav to the Minimize Program event.

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